As part of our Emerging Leadership Initiative, Crowd Conservation seeks to support emerging leaders in conservation through collaboration, mentoring and professional development.
We believe mentorship is an effective way to support emerging leaders and conservation professionals throughout their careers, as these experiences can lead to increased confidence, community-building, professional competency and, ultimately, durable impacts in conservation.
To this end, we are proud to partner with the Western Collaborative Conservation Network (WCCN) to create a Mentorship Toolkit, a digital toolkit with resources for individuals and organizations looking to harness the power of mentorship for its many benefits. While mentorship practices are well established in some sectors, including higher education, tech and banking, our research has identified a gap in available resources specific to natural resources and conservation. We aim to address that gap through development of the Mentorship Toolkit.
The Toolkit’s objectives are to identify:
- The different types of mentorship, relationship-building best practices, benefits and potential outcomes of a mentorship relationship.
- Mentor roles and responsibilities
- Mentee roles and responsibilities
- How to best build relationships between mentors and mentees
- How to start or build up a mentorship program
- Needs, opportunities, and next steps for us as a community of practitioners dedicated to supporting the next generation of conservation professionals
- Existing Mentorship Programs and other relevant resources
Phase 1 – Publicly Available Toolkit
The Toolkit will be an iterative resource, evolving as new information becomes available.
Status: Our aim is to have the first edition available online before the end of 2025.
Phase 2 – Applied Research
The process for developing the toolkit has included interviews with individuals and organizations that have successful mentoring programs or high-impact experiences as mentors and/or mentees, as well as reviews of published toolkits and research from different sectors.
Our IRB-approved research and findings will eventually be published in a peer-reviewed paper, so that our work can be shared with the research community and continue building our shared knowledge on mentorship.
Status: Data collection and transcription is in progress.
Phase 2 – Mentorship Training
Once the Toolkit is published, our team will be developing a mentorship training workshop that will help conservationists learn mentorship best practices, hone their skills as mentors, and become familiar with the Toolkit’s resources.
Phase 3 – Community of Support
As the Toolkit is disseminated across the conservation field, Crowd Conservation will convene and facilitate a community of Mentors and Mentorship Program Coordinators to encourage shared learning and continual professional development around the topic of mentorship and network building.
Toolkit Updates:
Check out our latest update in our blog on – Key Themes Emerging
The Toolkit is shaping up with many worksheets, checklists, and reflection questions to help mentees, mentors, and program coordinators make the most out of each and every mentorship relationship.
Our next step, once we have completed the first working draft, is to create a training workshop based on the Toolkit.
We hope to have the toolkit and training completed before the WCCN’s in-person convening in May 2026 so that we can host a mentorship training workshop for the projected 120+ participants at the event.
We are seeking $15,000 to cover the work that needs to be completed over the next year. You can read our pitch here.
If you know of anyone who may be interested in learning more about this project or supporting the development of our mentorship toolkit, please contact Nicole Reese (nicole@crowd-conservation.org). Please help us share our update and request broadly!
This is an opportunity to equip our conservationists with the skills they need to work across divides. Thank you for supporting this collaborative effort, and keep an eye out for our published Mentorship Toolkit coming soon.
Please join the conversation!
If you are interested in the Toolkit (either as a co-creator, supporter, or as an interviewee), please contact us! We want to include your voice and perspective into this work.
